Forest Landscape Restoration Act Guidance Released

DATE POSTED: 11/17/2009

Forest Landscape Restoration Act Guidance Released

Congress, under Title IV of Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program.

The purpose of the CFLR Program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack articulated his vision for America’s Forests in a speech given in Seattle in August. The Secretary underscored the overriding importance of forest restoration by calling for “complete commitment to restoration”. In this same speech, the Secretary highlighted the need for pursuing an “all lands approach to forest restoration” and called for close coordination with other landowners to encourage collaborative solutions through landscape-scale operations.

The CFLR Program provides a means to achieve these aims and to also:

encourage ecological, economic, and social sustainability;
leverage local resources with national and private resources;
facilitate the reduction of wildfire management costs, including through reestablishing natural fire regimes and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire;
demonstrate the degree to which various ecological restoration techniques achieve ecological and watershed health objectives; and,
encourage utilization of forest restoration by-products to offset treatment costs, to benefit local rural economies, to and improve forest health.